Conventional data center network architectures suffer from several design drawbacks which can undermine their agility (their ability to assign any server of a data center network to any service). First, the configurations of conventional networks are typically tree-like in nature and consist of relatively expensive equipment. This can result in congestion and the development of computational hotspots—even when spare capacity is available elsewhere in the network. Second, conventional data center networks do little to prevent a traffic flood in one service from affecting the other services around it. When one service experiences a traffic flood, it is common for all those services sharing the same network sub-tree to suffer collateral damage. Third, the routing design in conventional data center networks typically achieves scale by assigning servers topologically significant Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and dividing servers up among virtual local area networks (VLAN)s. However, this can create an enormous configuration burden when servers are reassigned among services, thus further fragmenting the resources of the data center. Furthermore, human involvement can typically be required in these reconfigurations, thus limiting the speed of this process. Finally, other considerations such as the difficulty in configuring conventional data center networks and the costs of equipment used in such networks can also negatively impact the agility of these networks.